One Year

Guys. It's been ONE year that we've been in our house!!! Can you believe it?! 

One year ago yesterday we started moving in but we actually reached the one year mark of owning our home on September 12th. Let's recap some of the changes that have happened in the last year of home ownership, shall we?

I shared the news that we had officially bought our house and I shared when we moved. 

Our first project (before even moving in) was painting all of the kitchen cabinets.

We brought Sophie home.

We went to Ikea and did a few small projects with Ikea organizers. and purchased some Ikea furniture. We bought some new kitchen appliances from Home Depot.

We decorated for Christmas, bought some new decor, and figured out how to deal with having no pantry.

I made extensive to-do lists for our house interior and the exterior.

I straightened up our office.

We updated our wall decor and bought some cool wall art for our kitchen. 

We installed new blinds- finally some privacy!

I organized some kitchen drawers (check back on Wednesday to see inside all our kitchen drawers and cupboards!)

Some small house updates were made, did some yard work, learned all about gardening, and Tim built a walkway all by himself!

Once that was completed I created some new front gardens. I managed to keep everything alive that I planted! I have been loving having gardens this summer and can't wait to add on next year!

Can you believe we completed all that stuff in our first year here? Tim is currently working on a project right now and I will drop a little teaser picture right here....

Any guesses what we are up to?

Cheers to another year of projects in our first home!

Fall Decorating!

Well it's officially September and you know what that means.... time for fall decorating!

This past Saturday was rainy and gross so it was the perfect day to haul my fall decor out of the basement and get it set up. I know it seems a little early but this year I was more than ready to change things up in our home since I am home pretty much 24/7 lately! Last fall was our first fall in our home and I didn't buy anything new decor-wise since I had to be so careful about what I had out with a new puppy. After I pulled out my one bin of decor I realized I had a ton of dish towels so I went through and decluttered what I didn't need anymore. Then I realized I don't really have that much decor. I know I don't have a huge space to decorate but I am going to try to start collecting some more decor. 

To see previous years fall decor:

• Fall 2018 Apartment Fall Decor
• Fall 2017 Apartment Fall Decor
• Fall 2016 Apartment Fall Decor

I unfortunately didn't do a post last year on fall decor. I think things were so hectic with moving and getting Sophie!

Here's what my decor looks like so far this year...

 

On the bathroom shelf I placed this small Hocus Pocus pumpkin which I got at The Christmas Tree Shop years ago. I didn't want to do anything too crazy in the bathroom but putting one small little pumpkin brings a tiny bit of fall to this little room.

I know I didn't use this sign last year but I thought that placing it on the kitchen counter was just too perfect. Hopefully we can keep the kitchen counter clear so this is on display all fall. Does your kitchen counter become a collection area??

These towels look SUPER wrinkled but I had just pulled them from the dryer. These are my favorite fall dish towels and I believe they came from the Target dollar spot a few years ago. I only kept a few fall dish towels because my dish towel drawer is overflowing!

The leaves candle from Bath and Body works is my absolute favorite. It smells amazing and I need to place a Bath and Body Works order to restock! I only have one back up right now and that is not enough with how much I love this candle! 

This half wall between the kitchen and the living room is both fun and challenging to decorate. I love that I can do things like this with the leaf garland but I don't always know what to do with it the rest of the year. Do you have any challenging spots to decorate in your home? 

The table by our front door always is super simple because Sophie knocks into it sometimes. I am risking my Mickey Halloween pumpkin here, fingers crossed it makes it through! This little leaf tray is something I found a few years ago (I can't remember where...) but I love little trays and having them around my home!

I placed this glass pumpkin that my mom gave me for my birthday last year (I think from HomeGoods?), more leaf garland, and my little witch on the tv stand.  

Not fall decor related but I pulled this picture of Tim and I from our wedding out of the guest room and placed it out here. Since we got married in the fall I think it is definitely appropriate and I may keep it out here full time. I am still loving my fiddle leaf fig and despite getting a bit dusty it's still going strong!

I plan on decorating outside in a few weeks once the pumpkins become available. Do you have plans for outdoor fall decorating? I am definitely grabbing some mums, I'm thinking of white and a deep wine color. I will also be grabbing a ton of white pumpkins if I can find them and then maybe some mini orange pumpkins for the walkway. I will definitely share pictures once it's completed!

Let me know what you are doing for fall decor this year and what your favorite places to shop decor are!

Our Living Room

Happy Monday everyone!

I promised pictures of each room of our house and today I am delivering! We are going to start off in the living room. 

Speaking of the living room I am sitting on the couch writing this and I just had to stop typing because Sophie jumped up into my lap to get some cuddles and then just as suddenly jumped back down to go back to her watch at the front door.

Our living room is the number one most used room in our home. We spend almost all of our time in here. This is where we watch tv, where we cuddle with Sophie, where we play games, etc. Basically if we are in the house and awake we are in the living room. 

Sophie is ready to show you around!

The view above is from the end of our hallway, entryway to our kitchen.

Here is the view from our front door. We keep things pretty casual in our living room. It's a cozy place with throw blankets and we very quickly move the throw pillows around to make ourselves comfortable. Sophie climbs on top of everything and doesn't hesitate to lay on the couch after digging in the dirt in the yard so we don't get to be super precious about anything. I would love a white couch but that will never work with our lifestyle. Don't even suggest dogs shouldn't be allowed on the couch because then where would we cuddle? :)

When I took these pictures I was watching Gilmore Girls obviously. I wish we had room to do a whole tv stand setup like Alexandra Beuter had on YouTube but unfortunately we just don't have the wall space. Someday when we rearrange the house that may be a possibility. 

My favorite wall art in the house is my it's so good to be home sign. I purchased this on Etsy and I think it works so perfectly in our home. Nowadays it is so good to be home with everything that's going on. I'm thankful to have our home and have a place we can spend time during this crazy time. 

Sophie's bed is right under the window and she doesn't often lay there but I like to leave it here as an option for her. It does make the room a little more crowded but it's nice to give her a place to lay if she wants it. 

Fun fact: In her bed you can see a little pink toy. That is piggy, the first toy we gave her on our ride home. Piggy comes to bed with us every night and often she will go get him and bring him out of bed during the day. It is so cute when she goes to "wake him up"

I am still trying to keep my fiddle leaf fig alive on that table in the corner. Fingers crossed!

One final look towards the front door.  Thank you all for stopping by and taking a look at our living room! Is your living room the most used room in your house?

Living Room Updates

Hi again! Today I'm showing you some living room updates we made! Every corner of our house is a work in progress and I'm quickly learning that even when I say something is "done" I mean "done for now" 

If you are on Instagram check out MyTexasHouse who has a house that is GOALS but also continually is changing things which just goes to show that even when your house looks perfect you can still want to change things up!

So today is all about our living room updates. I finally convinced Tim to hang up our Etsy sign from Pallettes and Peonies. I saw this originally on The SunnySide Up blog and absolutely loved it. 

We debated where on the wall to place it but ended up going just about center. I am considering putting a shelf on either side of the sign but I haven't fully decided yet. I just don't want it to look overcrowded, I much prefer a very simple and clean look.

If you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments!

This is what the view of it looks like from the kitchen. Very simple but at least there is something on the wall now!

The other new update in our living room is our new coffee table....

Instead of the bulky, wooden top coffee table now we have a smaller, bright white table. I love that it matches our small table from At Home.

I picked up this new coffee table at Wayfair and I'm so glad it helped pull the room together.

Sophie just loves to jump in every picture that I take of the house :)

I think this coffee table fits the space much better than the other one did. It also is a lot lighter weight and just brightens up the whole living room.

I also pulled Sophie's old bed out of the living room. Girl doesn't need two beds in the living room right?! We also picked up a new bin from HomeGoods to hold some of her toys because her toy bin was overflowing! Little spoiled pup.

I don't feel like this room is complete at all despite getting a new rug, new table and new wall art in here. I definitely am considering another small table and lamp in the back corner by the side of the couch. Like I mentioned before I am still figuring out if I want anything else on the wall. I also still want to change out the fan, which is a project for another day.

We have been living without coasters for awhile in fear that Sophie would eat them. While at HomeGoods I found marble coasters that are super heavy. I know that Sophie won't be able to eat them and they look great and fit into the aesthetic that I'm going for.

While I look at the pictures I can see how badly our couch needs to be cleaned, I desperately need to order a steam cleaner.

Here you can see our new toy bin how much less crowded it is with only one bed! I still am figuring out how I want to set everything up. I know I keep saying that everything isn't complete but I'm sure everyone is feeling the same about their own homes. In this picture you can also see our new little door mat that I picked up from Amazon. I actually picked up two of these and put one by the kitchen side door as well. I'm not 100% sold on them but they were only $17 a piece so they work for now!

Here are the marble coasters from HomeGoods. They are heavy and solid and work great!

Clearly someone is interested in them :)

So those are the updates to our living room! I will keep you updated as we make more updates!

IKEA Entertainment Center Update

Happy Monday! Today we are sharing our new entertainment center! 

Our living room has been equipped with an old unit I bought years ago (back in 2014 I posted about buying the Ikea baskets inside here, and when I built it here) but it was time for an update. We had gone to Ikea weeks ago and picked up our new entertainment center but hadn't gotten the chance to build them (I mean Tim hadn't gotten the chance....)

Here is Sophie showing off the old system with the baskets she was trying to tear apart. We knew we needed to move quickly before she really started going after them.

So Tim got to work!

Sophie was a ton of help as usual! we chose the Havsta cabinets from IKEA which I think look great! I had gotten inspiration from Alexandra Beuter on YouTube from her entertainment system but we didn't have the wall space for all the cabinets she has. So we ended up just picking up two of them but I love how it turned out!

Tim also drilled some holes in the back so we could get wires through. 

Now we have two cabinets that close and hide our items while also prevent Sophie from getting into anything! I think it's much more functional for us and we are loving it so far. Now we just need to mount the tv!

What project should we do next around here?

Spring Cleaning: The Living Room

Let's chat about spring cleaning the living room! 

Our living room is pretty massive but fortunately the living room is a pretty easy place to spring clean.

Here's what I did to accomplish a clean living room (can you see exactly where I was sitting right before I took this picture? Totally forgot to move the pillows back into place before I took the picture!)

The first thing I did was start by doing any dusting that needed to be done. Since we live on planet Earth and deal with gravity it's always best to work from top to bottom. I dusted my pictures, all the furniture, and moved around everything in order to get everything wiped down.

I vacuumed the couch, folded all the blankets and rearranged the pillows.

I don't have the ability to get my windows washed on the outside being on the top floor of an apartment but I make sure that the inside is squeaky clean. This is a great time to also wipe down your blinds and wash your curtains.

Decluttering is also important. I regularly go through these baskets and keep the clutter in this room to a minimum.

Our living room also serves as a mudroom for us. This is where we take off our coats and shoes when we get home. I put all the heavy coats away in our front hall closet and pulled all my boots off our shoe mat and brought them to my closet for the summer.

Once everything had been dusted, cleaned and decluttered I did a thorough vacuum job of the entire room. This is a great time to move furniture and vacuum behind and underneath everything.

Have you finished your spring cleaning yet?

How To Make a Travel Pinboard

Today I'm sharing with you how I made our travel pinboard!

This is a fun DIY project I recently completed which has really completed our living room. There was one small wall I really felt was missing something and this is what it was! This was a very easy project to complete and can be very cost efficient if you don't splurge on a map like I did. I wanted mine to be a muted color and couldn't find a map I liked until I found one on Easy, but we'll get into that in a little bit.

Once I decided I wanted to do this project I took a trip to our local A.C. Moore.

I picked up a 24x36 poster frame that had a small piece of plastic as a cover on the front of it. I simply pulled the plastic off (despite the warnings not to) and was left with a simple black frame.  I ended up getting a 50% off deal on this frame and only paid $15 for it.

I also bought a roll of cork for just over $9 and used my hot glue gun to glue attach it to the backing of the frame.  I did try to flatten out the roll ahead of time but was slightly impatient and ended up gluing it before it was completely flat.

Once I was done gluing onto the cardboard backing I laid it all out on the floor and weighed down the edges while I went to bed. 

The next morning I was up bright and early to get to the post office to pick up my map! I checked on my new cork board and glued down the edges that were still a little loose but felt it had flattened out quite nicely.

I did spend some time just trimming the edges with scissors so the cork fit correctly on the cardboard. It had been a little over when I first glued everything down so I made sure everything looked even before the next step.

I had bought mod podge and a small brush (under $7 combined) in order to attach the poster to the cork and had heard that it was a bit difficult to get posters to stick to cork so I knew I was in for a challenge.

I used some random items to help flatten out the map for a bit and quickly got impatient and wanted to get started! The map itself was something I found on Etsy and was a bit pricer then I initially planned. I fell in love with the gray and loved that you could customize the title. If you are looking to purchase one you can find them here.

I chose "Our Travels" as our title since that is what I plan to keep track of on this map.

Now I've already mentioned my impatience twice in this post welllll I think it made my end result a little crinkly. Anddd if you look real close you can tell that in the mod podge there's a little dirt (which why did I think it was a good idea to do this project on a carpet?) however I love it. It's not perfect but neither are we and I think the crinkles give it a real life map quality.

I spent some time sticking my pins in the map before Tim got home from work. I purchased a container of map pins from Walmart and we discussed ahead of time what colors we would use. Tim's favorite color is green so any place he has visited on his own will have a green pin. My favorite color is blue so any place I visit on my own will be marked with a blue pin. We have decided on red pins for any place we have gone or will go together. As we have kids in the future we will add new pin colors to show where we go as a family.

Now for some details!

I loved sticking all my blue pins in Europe and remembering my trips to Spain, England and France.

Tim and I have been on a few adventures so far together including: our trip to New Jersey, our Disney World vacation, a trip to Vermont, visiting the Bronx Zoo, visiting my parents in Florida, and various trips around RI, CT and MA.

I traveled quite a bit growing up but we went to Disney World pretty much every other year and repeated quite a few locations more then once. I did visit Puerto Rico a few times and we took a Disney cruise to Nassau Bahamas and Castaway Cay but I still have dreams of visiting most of the Caribbean! Tim has been on a couple cruises through the Bahamas so his pins definitely dominate in that section of the map. Most of our pins remain on the east coast while only three of mine made their way to the west. I have visited Los Angeles, Anaheim and Laguna Beach in California but since I ran out of blue pins I have one representing Laguna Beach. I have also been to Las Vegas Nevada and Tijuana in Mexico but there is so much to explore on that coast!

We have dreams of visiting more states and countries in the future and now this map will inspire us and keep track as we make those dreams come true!

This entire project was done for $85 and more then half of that was on the map which you can definitely get for cheaper if you aren't picky about what your map looks like!

How do you keep track of your travels? Where do you dream of traveling to? Any future travel plans? Please share I'd love to hear!